Alright Folks!

I know you're all keen to get your hands on some Kindred, I am certainly keen to get the files out to you, but as its our first time on backerkit, its our first experience with the backend of backerkit, and there are a few timings I wasnt aware of when we started here. They all make sense, but now I can give a proper timeline. We ALSO have some small announcements and things to show off - So thats very exciting too.

Step 1: Payment
Upon the completion of the campaign, roughly $10,000 of pledges were 'failed collections' - Basically whether it be banks, cards, funds, users or platform, someone somewhere said no. Since then, this number has been corrected down to $6300. This is because people have the opportunity to find alternate payment solutions, try other cards, use a prepaid visa etc etc - Whatever alternate solution they find. This is because the payment collections on backerkit are done via stripe, and from what we can see, some banks and financial institutions take umbrage with this, and decide they should be allowed to tell you where and how you can spend your money.
Backerkits guidance on this is to allow everyone TWO WEEKS to correct payment information, because after surveys have gone out, you will nolonger be able to correct your payment and your pledge will be cancelled.

This doesn't mesh particularly well with out in house schedule, and our workdays, so we are instead going to give slightly under two weeks. This means there are 7 days from now remaining to fix any payment issues you might have to secure your pledge.

Step 2: Survey
All campaigns have a survey, and after this window for payment correction closes, we will be launching ours. For most campaigns, this survey collects information about shipping, options on items where required etc. For our campaign, it is mostly a formality. The survey is your entry point into the pledge manager, and allows you to confirm the details of your pledge before proceeding. We do have a few questions for our Commercial License tiered holders who will need to fill out some details, and we also have ONE question related to, well, marketing. We'd love an honest answer to this, as it will help guide our game development after Sisters of the Old Blood.

Much like the payment phase, the survey we do need to allow people time to complete and return. There is a limited window to do this (Two Weeks) so MAKE SURE YOU COMPLETE YOUR SURVEY WHEN YOU RECIEVE IT
This will ensure no further delays to receiving your files.

Step 3: Pledge Manager
Somewhere between Step 2 and 3 (Honestly, its a bit nebulous to me if you get access through the survey or after the survey) - you will be directed to the Pledge manager. Here you can alter your pledge, collect new add ons (if you want) and people will be able to late back. Late backing is more expensive, as the campaign is now finished, but for those late to the party it will be possible to dive in here. At this stage, you will be able to download your files through the backerkit pledge manager. You can return here to access your files any time through your backerkit account.

Summary
So ultimately it will be approximately 3 weeks before you can all download your files, this will be slightly disappointing to some, but for most, entirely normal with crowdfunding campaigns. We will be better prepared and able to forecast and warn people about the post campaign delay for our next campaign. However, with this said, there is a silver lining;

In all likelihood the FIRST Stretch Goal Miniature/s will be available for download alongside the launch minis.

Jackson has commenced sculpting the first unit, we chose this one for specific reasons related to scheduling the rest of the work behind the scenes. Rumor engine style, we are including a tiny snippet of a WIP miniature, you can guess what it is...

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT
That pretty much covers all the launch details, but we promised a few small announcements, so here they are:

We have officially found the sculptor of our bust for the Kindred of the Abyss - Victor Aguilar del Bosque - Victor is an exceptionally gifted professional and award winning sculptor - If you're a fan of the Mini Painting Youtube crowd, you might recognize the name as the sculptor of some of the fantastic wood elves from Miniacs brush box and model campaign and also Squidmars Champions of Sona campaign. Murray, Jenn and Myself have ALL painted models sculpted by Victor, and we love his work. So we were extremely excited to hear he was happy to be onboard.

We have ALSO found our Cutaway artist - You see, in searching for artists in this genre, it became increasingly obvious that this was somewhat of a dying art form. The amazing artists who created the visual dictionaries, star wars fact files etc that kids like me grew up on have either passed on or are working at extremely high positions in major companies, IE: Lucasfilm. So we were so glad to have discovered Juuso Laasonen - Having grown up with the same inspirations, Juuso has become extremely skilled at creating cutaway art - in fact one of his earlier pieces you might be familiar with, i'd certainly seen it around the internet numerous times!

This particular piece was considered, paraphrasing here - "A fun sketch for myself that I was hesitant to post"

Juuso has worked on heaps of 40k Fanart, which was certainly one way we knew we were right for each other, but he has worked on a huge catalogue of work, from commissions, to sketches, to passion projects

Check out his art here



That is all for today, we will be back with an update next Monday, which should be the Survey links for you to start filling out!
Thanks - Dave

ITS ALMOST OVER!

Thats right, the campaign is nearly done, its been an exciting ride - But really, it means the journey is just beginning. Thanks to all of your support, the Kindred are going to become a fully fledged faction, everything we need for our mystery game system. A lot of people have pondered what kind of game its going to be, with the main question being "Full Wargame" or "Skirmish Game" - We cant give away much yet, and a lot is subject to change, but the simplest answer, which will also explain the scope of units in this campaign is "Somewhere inbetween"

We strive to create a game with a little bit more complexity, uniqueness and depth within its units, more reminiscent of classic Warhammer, however at a scope and scale that is manageable to build, collect and importantly, play. In house, I (Dave) have been referring to it as "Platoon Scale" - The forces at work in our universe rarely muster in large armies, and are more focused as raiding warbands. The presence of vehicles alone should suggest this will not be a 6-10 model skirmish game.

We have just revealed our final bonus stretch goals - However, we consider all of these a blessing and a boon - We had optimistically planned on our original 55k final stretch goal as being 'everything we need to make what we want' - And now we are in a victory lap of making things we want, but we didn't necessarily need. Cutaway art, An Artist Bust, conversion parts for darker more religious toned bitz for using our models in other games - Its fun stuff that is as much for us as you - And every single one we hit is just an awesome bonus.

We've Been Busy
While for the duration of the campaign we are limited in our capacity to push forward with the project (The point of crowdfunding is to raise the funds to do just that) we have given Alysha the go ahead to start working on some art, and we wanted to share some Bingi with you today. What is a Bingi? What is a Bingus Boy? What is this goal we unlocked?

Exactly.

Its time to find out, while we share in development concept art, through to a completed work done by Alysha Lowery.

So heres the scoop - The Bingus Boys started as a joke, an in house comment when I (Dave) was riffing to Vaughn and Alysha about characters for the game and what we should name the faction. A fan of ranting about nonsense, I threw the name "The Bingus Boys" into the mix, as an absolute joke. (Thats right, the Kindred of the Abyss started their life in production as The Bingus Boys.) However the name stuck, people liked it, we laughed about it, and eventually it created its own kind of reality. We imagined what Bingus Boys could possibly be, could we include this production in house joke in the faction and not destroy the integrity of the project? Of course we could.

We conceptualized the idea of a duo, brothers in the Kindred, and imagined them being troublemakers, with Kindred shaking their fist shouting "THOSE DANG BINGUS BOYS" as they caused some new mayhem. Like a dirty foul underwater Dukes of Hazzard, the Bingus boys slowly developed an identity.

We wanted to create a dynamic of a weaselly Kindred Reaver, the older brother who manipulates his Malformed brother into all kinds of heinous tasks. The simpler brother being somewhat like Lenny from of mice and men, not knowing of his own strength and compromised of intelligence.

We went through multiple iterations, playing with this idea of Nascar drivers, hillbilly stereotypes, dodgy gamblers, truckers, moving through various incarnations and never landing on something solid. Ultimately, we decided the boys were just too silly to fit in the setting, as models, as gameplay pieces in the faction. So we decided to adapt them.

The Bingus boys of old still exist, we imagine their distraught neighbors shouting after them as kids and teenagers, getting up to mischief and misadventure, but those days are gone. Now the boys are reavers, leading a particularly savage raiding band of some renown, known as being some of the most wild and vicious Kindred out there. Gus, the big lad, wields a Harpoon cannon usually mounted on ships and submarines, whereas Ben, the cruel older brother, has a penchant for hunting targets from afar. The annoyed cries of Ben and Gus eventually contracting into Bengus, then Bingus, and with some nice art, great models and a paintjob, the Bingus Boyz will be wreaking havoc on your tabletops soon.

Hope everyone is having fun with their Kindred models so far - We've seen a bunch of printed and a few painted examples out there in the wild, which is a lot of fun to see - We've got a little bit of progress on several thing to share with everyone today, so lets get to it.

Firstly, and probably the most exciting thing for most of you - Is I have made the call to push up the Zealot pack in the schedule. Despite it being a late added stretch goal, it is clear that a LOT of you want evil culty bits and more weapons for you to use these divers down in some kind of trenches. We know more about Mariana trenches than Heretic Trenches, but we will let you take the lead on that one!

Here are some of the new weapon options sculpted - We have a flame thrower, a trench shotgun, the final SMG with closed and open stock as well as our bolt action rifle. I also added in a bullpup compact sniper, thats more for the kindred than the trenches as its a bit modern, but i'm sure many of you will make use of it regardless.

There is plenty more to come on this front, so stay tuned.

Next up, I am really excited to share the tiniest, rumor enginiest view of what Juuso has been working on - This is part of his sketch showing off... What is that? Something mechanical? A new water bottle? I dont know... (I mean obviously I do but marketing amiright GW)

As for our wonderful Sailors - Patrick is hard at work sculpting them, we've settled on a base mesh and now we are moving into posing the models and creating a lot of options - I will be able to share more of them soon!

In other news - I've been chipping away at the lore, and we have a video this weekend releasing and sharing some of the official color schemes for the 'canon' factions of the kindred.

If you want to try coloring your own, we thought we would release a special coloring page for developing faction paint schemes. You will see this more in our Lore PDF as it comes along. Enjoy!

Excited to share more, but if you want a taste of the Kindred lore as it stands, we have ALSO started a multi week short adventure in the world of the Kindred, and if you like live RPs - go check it out -  HERE

 

The character portaits used in the Roleplay will be further refined and added to the Kindred sourcebooks, giving us a unique view at Kindred society through artworks we wouldn't have been able to make without the Tabletop Time Roleplay commitment. 

Now I am aware most of you are mainly here for the minis - Well, we will have some new downloads available in the coming weeks, with either the sailors or the zealot pack wrapping up first (we are not sure who will win that sculpting race)

Thanks everyone!
Dave

YES THATS RIGHT - YOU CAN DOWNLOAD OUR FIRST COMPLETED STRETCH GOAL NOW!

We are so happy with the completed model - Jackson has done a fantastic job realizing this weird submersible crab. There is also an option to print out the hull with a cross cut out for a standard citadel style flight stand if you want your submarines soaring through the sky, flying through the void of space or for dioramas underwater.

The model is also primed with magnet slots for 4mm and 6mm magnets - So if you like options or maybe want to hedge your bets, using the model for games today and preparing your model for Tabletop Times oneday wargame, this is perfect!

There are rules for the Kindred available on OPR (we are working toward better/clearer compatibility now)

Otherwise, you will find this vehicle has many of the needed options to be fielded as a mechanized main battle tank for popular game systems.

Known colloquially as a "Wreckcrawler" this class of submersibles can dock into a walking frame, ideal for gaining purchase in mining operations underwater or for salvage of the numerous ancient ships that litter the sea floor from the time of the calamity. Over the centuries, the scientific manipulators have become more vicious and cruel, and even the marine animal tagging 'guns' designed to punch through whale fins have been employed against much... much smaller targets. Land Targets. 

Whether pack hunting colossal Cephalopods with their brutal harpoon cannon or fully committed to land warfare with an array of weaponry, the Wreckcrawlers have become a ubiquitous sight when encountering Kindred Raids. Clad in what to most after-dwellers is 'impervious armor', the mere mention of the nightmarish deep crabs is enough to keep the children of the world awake at night, and well advised not to venture too close to the sea without supervision.

We hope you enjoy your new Crab-Tanks - And cannot wait to see them printed and painted and shared with us in the discord!

FINAL NOTE

We will be closing LATE BACKER availability VERY SOON

If you have not backed the project, never to be repeated full bundle prices are going away within the next two weeks. Consider yourself warned!